February 13th marked the IronCupcake: Milwaukee challenge, which we luckily found out about a couple of weeks prior to the event.  Let me just say that we were both ECSTATIC to be going and bought our tickets right away ;).  One of the perks of going?  The judge was none other than Duff Goldman, himself, from Food Network's Ace of Cakes.  This. Is. Awesome.

Classy Girl Cupcakes

Our tickets included four samples a piece, and there were so many professional as well as amateur bakers that there were too many to choose from - but we took our 8 tickets total, picked the best looking ones (we did seem to base our picks off of the prettiest decorated, as well as the largest ones haha).  We decided to wait until we came home to eat our cupcakes, so our time at the event was mainly spent walking around at all of the different displays, as well as getting a peek at Duff during an autograph session.








Unfortunately, we didn't know the autograph session was going on and therefore did not have a cookbook for him to sign, and they were sold out of the ones they had on hand so we didn't get his signature, but Ki managed to snap a picture anyways ;).






This was one of our personal favorites, and the winner of the Best Amateur for their Breakfast Pairs.

The Cupcake Doctor offered a Pancakes and Bacon Cupcake next to a Mimosa Cupcake.  They were both delicious - and may I say I am very disappointed that he is an amateur and therefore does not have a bakery I can visit!







You would think that eating four cupcakes would satisfy our cupcake craving for a few weeks... or even a few days.  But no.  We made it a day before we were wanting another one.  So, we used a very simple technique to make delicious cupcakes.  Ki filled them with a sugar free pudding snack pack and topped with cool whip, but really once you know the cupcake technique there is so much versatility you can definitely make anything you can imagine.  I'm leaving the nutrition off, because depending on the kind of cake mix you buy, the nutrition counts will change.  But since you are adding zero calories to the cake part, you'll just have to divide the total calories by how many servings you make, and also add in the calories for any filling or topping you use (but they're delicious alone as well).

Chocolate Coke Cupcakes
1 box chocolate cake
12 oz coca cola zero

Mix ingredients and fill up the muffin pan and bake according to the directions, until a cake tester comes out clean.  Ki added more batter to the cups then we usually do so they would be extra large - she also only used 2 cups of cake mix (half a box) and 6 oz of soda so we wouldn't eat the whole thing :).

Each cupcake only had around 175 calories with all of the topping and filling included.